5 - Haiti and the Dominican Republic

Summary

On Haiti immediately after its independence from France, the Haitian occupation of Santo Domingo, 1822–44, and the independence of the Dominican Republic, see essay IV: 4.

For the Haitian government after 1843, and on Faustin Soulouque especially, Gustave d’Alaux, L’Empereur Soulouque et son empire (Paris, 1856) continues to be useful, but should be used with caution: it is reportedly really the work of Maxime Raybaud, consul-general of France in Haiti. Sir Spenser Buckingham Saint John, Hayti, or the Black Republic (London, 1884; repr. 1972) has a very informative explanation of Haiti’s economic decadence in the second half of the nineteenth century, although its point of view is totally anti-Haitian. The essays of David Nicholls and Benoit Joachim cited in essay IV:4 are valuable for Haiti in the middle decades of the nineteenth century. An interesting work that deals with a short period of the second half of the nineteenth century is André-Georges Adam, Une crise haitienne, 1867–1869 (Port-au-Prince, 1982–3).

On the Dominican Republic and Dominican–Haitian relations after 1844, Emilio Rodríguez Demorizi has published a long series of documentary volumes, some of which are prefaced by important introductions; the most useful are Documentos para la historia de la República Dominicana, 3 vols. (Ciudad Trujillo, 1944–7), Guerra Dominico-Haitiana (Ciudad Trujillo, 1957), Antecedentes de la anexión a Espana (Ciudad Trujillo, 1955), and Relaciones Dominico-Espanolas (1844–1859) (Ciudad Trujillo, 1955). See also William Javier Nelson, ‘The Haitian political situation and its effect on the Dominican Republic, 1849–1877’, TA, 104/2 (1987), 19–29.